Performer: Alison Kettlewell

The latest, thrilling instalment of Barrie Kosky's Ring cycle at Covent Garden does not have to strain for contemporary relevance. 

The Royal Opera's season opener is a welcome return for Tchaikovsky's opera after nine years, and a house debut for American director Ted Huffman.

Director Oliver Mears turns Scottish Opera’s Eugene Onegin into a memory play, with fine singing from a strong cast starring Natalya Romaniw as a thrilling Tatyana.  

Longborough Festival Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser is impressive vocally but particularly distinguished by Anthony Negus’s intelligent and vital conducting.

The Hallé Orchestra, led by Sir Mark Elder, followed their award-winning 2009 Götterdämmerung with a concert performance of Die Walküre over two nights, prefaced by Gerard McBurney’s new work, The Madness of an Extraordinary Plan. With an array of famed soloists, Elder masterminded a triumph, with the magnificent Hallé showing their quality on the concert stage.

Wagner's Die Walküre was split into two concert performances over two days, the first on one evening and the second on an afternoon and an evening. This review is for both. A spot picks out a man in the Bridgewater Hall’s front row, who steps up to stand by a table in front of the Hallé Orchestra, which is ready to begin. He puts on a braided coat to become Richard Wagner.